British police arrest 16 in anti-terror Raids
By Raza Mumtaz 'Pakistan Times' UK Bureau Chief

LONDON (UK): British police has said that they had arrested 16 men in two separate anti-terrorism operations.

Fourteen of the men were held in London in an operation that a police source said focused on suspected "training, recruitment and encouraging others to take part in terrorist activity".

Anti-terrorist police in Manchester arrested two men early on Saturday and were carrying out three searches but this was not linked to the London arrests, police there said.

The 12 of the London arrests were made at or near a Chinese restaurant in south London that police in riot gear raided on Friday night, questioning diners for hours and taking some away in handcuffs.

Police said they were searching a school in East Sussex, southern England, on Saturday in connection with the London arrests.

Probe

Another report says that British police are trying to monitor "thousands" of potential security suspects, the head of the anti-terrorism unit at London's Metropolitan Police said in an interview to be broadcast Sunday.

In the interview recorded in July, before the arrest of more than two dozen people on suspicion of an alleged plot to blow up US-bound aircraft, Peter Clarke said Britain was facing an increasing threat from homegrown extremists.

He refused to give an exact figure for the number of people suspected of direct or indirect involvement in plotting atrocities on British soil but said it ran into four figures.

"I don't want to go down the numbers game, I don't think it's helpful," he said.
"All I can say is that our knowledge is increasing and certainly in terms of broad description, the numbers of people who we have to be interested in are into the thousands."

Clarke said one of the main lessons since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States was that Islamist extremism was now not just an overseas phenomenon.

"What we've learned, and what we've seen all too graphically and all too murderously, is that we have a threat which is being generated here within the United Kingdom," he added.●